The U School is an Innovation Network school in the School District of Philadelphia. We accept students through a blind lottery, with half of our students coming from the region around our school and half from the rest of the city. Currently in our second year, we are designing The U School with our users (youth, educators, parents/guardians) at the center. As a part of this work, our staff spent this summer’s professional development designing spaces, systems, and curriculum to engage students in asynchronous, competency-based learning.

Our students come to us with vastly different experiences of and attitudes towards schooling. With that in mind, we know that we need to work intentionally to invest our students in the idea that they have agency in their own education. In our work last summer, we reenvisioned the way our classrooms are laid out, the way students access our curriculum, and our role as educators in the classroom with the goal of allowing students to learn at their own pace and in their own ways.

Through this conversation, members of The U School community including our educators, community partners, and students will share stories, artifacts, and data from our work, and will engage participants in a conversation of the implications of our design work for our students, our city, and our education system more broadly.

Conversational Practice

Our session will take the form of “Sharing Best Practices”. Members of the U School community will share vignettes, artifacts, and data from our work designing and implementing spaces, culture, and curriculum to support asynchronous learning towards the goal of student empowerment. The “Success Analysis” protocol will be used to allow conversation participants to engage in a discussion of the implications of our work for different school models, and to our vision for education, in large urban districts and beyond. Through this conversation, we will also use a similar form to engage participants in a discussion of the challenges of implementing this model, and to allow for critiques of the work. Ultimately, in sharing our work with educators from across the country, we hope to receive feedback from other educators on our model and design process.

Questions for Discussion:
What happens when students engage in asynchronous learning?
How can educators create conditions for optimal asynchronous learning?